The American painter, etcher, and lithographer James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834-1903) created a new set of esthetic principles, championed art for art's sake, and introduced a subtle style of painting in which atmosphere and mood predominated.

James McNeill Whistler was born in Lowell, Mass., on July 10, 1834, the son of Major George Whistler, a railroad engineer. In 1842 Czar Nicholas I of Russia invited Major Whistler to build a railroad from St. Petersburg to Moscow and offered the princely salary of $12,000 a year. In St. Petersburg the family lived luxuriously, with several servants, and James and his brother had a governess and a Swedish tutor. Because French was the court language, the boys soon became fluent in it. On one occasion the Whistlers took a trip 15 miles out of St. Petersburg to Tsarkoe Selo. Here, in the palace built by Catherine the Great, there was a suite of apartments in...